Messages - dmanley

Hello Andrew,I come from the pharma industry and I quite used to writing procedures, technical reports and general technical writing.

I have been looking at some of the wiki and see that there is a clear gap between what is on Pluto and LMCE.Is there an activity going on currently to being them in line or at least to the same standard?

for example if I was to receive a good list of what is needed to set up a system ie core and md plus basic automation stuff. I could generate a nice pretty presentation around that information for people to get an idea as to what is involved in start up lmce. I've never used flash or any thing like that but the wiki is quite poor at the moment.

And from my prospective (not having a clue) the first think I wanted to know was what h/w was needed and how long it would take to set up. I found it quite difficult to get that information.

Ok... This is turning into a rant so I'm going to stop cause i believe the work that is going on here is great and more importantly the work in the back ground seams to be huge!

All this is a bit sickening! The www.niveusmedia.com stuff that is.I've only started looking at this stuff (MCE, home automation etc...) at the end of last week, and to see how simple it is to do it manually but then see a price of $4k for one small box which will only work with one TV! It really makes you want to cry and set up your own company building those boxes!!!

I'd love to see the mark up guys like AMX, Crestron, Exceptional Innovation, Netstreams, Vantage, and more make on this stuff!

Also if you read between the lines this is only a box, no networking of room! you need the guys mentioned above to do that at an extra cost of say $40 k for 3 room network!

The article about the MS extenders; I came across then about 6 months ago when I was looking at a Sony MCE box for a local Sony shop, they wanted to sell the boxes and use me to set up and support! On my own with no formal training at all in IT!

The shop owner had been told that they are simple to network and have media all over the house for nothing! I asked for $25 k for a 3 room set up excluding equipment, they had a heart attach and then went looking for others, no one else would do it.

Here in Ireland there has been a boom in our economy which means that lots of people have lots on money but the knowledge has not developed as quickly as the money!

P.S. Home automation is still up in the air, this is the only one which is not getting the dregs from industry!This is misfortunate for us! Industry is way ahead on the automation front but its not getting stripped down and spread around the domestic markets, too much profit in it! If people started getting SCADA and Delta-V systems in there homes industry would demand an upgrade to their own or else a price slash!

Yea,I’m fully aware of that also, but I the features you want won't really change.The options technology options available will develop not change, in two year time anything new will be too new and not standard.This is why I'm looking at things like Linux for MCE.In two years time there will be a lot more than one developer registered on sourceforge with this project and, I would hope, there'll be a lot more than just 3 distro’s registered under the media centre distro category!

Some of the key things I’m after discovering from this exercise is that:One central server with thin clients appears to be the way to go.10 Gig Fibre networking will mean that very little processing will be needed at the client side, in the key rooms in the house which would need HDMI type media,In another 5 yrs time there may not be a need for the server as it may just stream straight from the net,The thin clients of today will be the PDA of tomorrow so a lot of the thin client may be built into each device, as in the TV will come with a network connection ready to be assigned an IP address.Wireless is getting much bigger each year so maybe a fat client using something like p2p to share media across the network will also be an option,Power for your computing needs will be separate from the house hold appliances as these could be one a separate line which would be connected to a low voltage alternative power supply,

All,Just so people know where I’m going from:I'm attempting to embark on a project of my own which will involve LMCE and my new home (yet to be built).I want to get everything designed and detailed before anything starts with the house.This way I can actually get a good quote for things; have buying power when it comes to suppliers and hopefully save a few quid!Also it will make for one great web site/rss feed during the whole thing!

I plan on doing a full design review which will look at all options available to a new home; Home Automation, Life Style Networking, Renewable Energy, A rated Home design etc…Some of this types of system will get installed but others won’t be implemented depending on the design review which will determine weather or not a feature is Critical, Major, Minor, or just a “Nice to Have”!

LMCE from an initial review appears to be a better solution than some of the other options out there, but I’m still looking.

I’m in the process of putting the initial requirements documents for the house together. This will hopefully help point me in the right direction for searching for vendors/suppliers and systems/features which I need/don’t need.

Just in case people start asking me this home probably won’t start construction till about ~2009/2010!I’m really going to go to town on the planning and design but before someone says it, I know that the day of ground works the plan will go out the window!

Thanks for you time and I hope you all will be able to take part in any of the threads I start up here.

I'm completely new to this stuff and as your information pointed out you can't actually send HDMI over a 10/100 LAN without a lot of compression and encoding/decoding at each end.This is what I was wondering day one but I was not making myself clear.Thanks for your input.

Do you know how I could spec a client that would be in a position to decode the MPEG2 HD you refer to below?Again I know this is a really vague question but could you tell me if a thin client would be capable of it or would you actually need the whole graphic card/processor/ram etc. of a standard PC?Where could I find out this sort of information?

Fibre, thanks for that I’ll be in contact!

What I’m trying to design is a Home Automation/Life Style Networking system for my home, yet to be built.

It will have a media streaming network for both video and audio, lighting control, HVAC, security and home automation.I would like to be first and foremost my home (wife and kids god blessing), a home business centre for me and the wife and a show case home for the technology of my business.

By the way I’m a dreamer, I haven’t set up the business yet but I do have a fiancé!

Thank you fibres,That was actually something I had not really got to yet but had figured that it was going to be that way.

For development purposes do you know where information may be got on get it to work? So that one could test the functionality.

Back to what i had originally ask.What i appear to be getting from you all is that; if you have a HDMI source, you can put this into a PC convert to digital, send over a normal LAN, and convert back to HDMI at the other end?

Does anybody out there know what kind of bandwidth this would use? I know how long a string is! but just in a generic simple one way set up.

Fibres,You are in the UK or Ireland, or are you a learned man or woman who knows about the set up in these locations?If you are from my end of the world and are using LinuxMCE could you tell me how difficult it was to set up with our systems? Any things I should look out for?